This article by Chris Rourke, is based on his workshop at the BA Manager Forum in June 2024.      

At the recent Business Analysis Managers Forum 2024 I presented a workshop on how user experience and business analysis can best work together. The workshop explored ways that businesses can harness the skills of User Experience (UX) professionals and Business Analysts to achieve the best outcomes for both the business and the customer.

Presenting a UX Perspective  

I should note that I am a UX professional with over 30 years of experience, rather than a BA. However, I and my User Vision colleagues have collaborated with BAs on many projects, providing user experience services to clients, particularly in financial services, government, and travel sectors.   

Creating successful products and services in today’s digital landscape requires a harmonious collaboration between UX and BA professionals. These two disciplines, while distinct, are interconnected and play vital roles in ensuring that digital solutions meet user needs and business goals.

Understanding the Roles  

Before looking at collaboration, let us first examine the traditional roles and responsibilities of these two disciplines.     UX Professionals aim to understand and enhance the overall user experience with a product or service. They apply user research, usability testing, and iterative, user-centric design processes to create intuitive, accessible, and engaging experiences that meet the needs and expectations of end-users.   
 
Business Analysts focus on capturing and defining business requirements and translating them into actionable specifications for stakeholders like technology teams developing solutions. They collaborate with various stakeholders to identify pain points, analyse processes, and define the objectives for developing digital solutions.  
 

These traditional BA and UX responsibilities can lead to conflict between the goals and activities of the two professions. Indeed, there is a risk that the BA team’s focus on business requirements may clash with the UX team’s focus on designing for end users’ needs discovered through user research.    

Balancing Business and User Needs  

In an ideal scenario, business goals would perfectly align with customer needs. However, real-world examples often reveal tensions between a business's goals and customers' concerns such as the conflict between businesses seeking customer data and customers' right to privacy.  
 
Another common example is the desires of customers to have personal interactions with airline customer service representatives versus airlines aiming to reduce call centre costs by ‘hiding’ their phone number and instead promoting self-service options via the website, chatbots and IVR menus. This disparity can result in customers feeling that their core need is unmet despite businesses' assurances that their ‘call is very important to us…’  

Bridging the Gap   

Within the ‘traditional’ focus of BAs primarily being the business and UX professionals being the end users, conflicting goals can adversely affect product or service design.  

Despite their distinct roles, UX and BA professionals share a common aim: creating solutions that deliver value to both users and the business.   
Many modern businesses recognise the importance of designing for user needs within their broader business requirements, and task their BAs with understanding these needs and ensuring the design caters to them. Meanwhile, the role of usability and UX professionals has evolved beyond digital screen layout and interaction. It now encompasses designing experiences across various touchpoints throughout the customer lifecycle.   
 

With a common link to service design, both professions have expanded their remits, often with overlapping responsibilities, methods and deliverables. This overlap can become be a source of conflict. Who is the actual ‘owner’ responsible for learning about the user needs? Who conducts and reports on user research, creating deliverables such as personas, storyboards and customer journey maps?    
 
There may be a risk that both UX and BA teams perform user research, with little co-ordination. Unsurprisingly, findings from parallel research initiatives often do not align, leading to discord over which findings are valid as the basis for requirements. This in turn can cause friction between BA and UX colleagues who should be working together toward common end goals.   
 
Through collaboration, both professions can embrace their respective perspectives to create solutions that balance user needs with business goals.  

Creating Collaboration

Collaboration between BA and UX professionals is mutually beneficial. UX professionals bring profound insights into user behaviour, preferences, and pain points, aiding BAs in understanding the context in which solutions will be used and their impact on end-users. BAs, on the other hand, provide UX teams with a clear understanding of business goals, constraints, and processes, enabling them to design experiences that delight users and drive long-term business value.  
 
Effective collaboration involves sharing methodologies and tools, open communication, knowledge sharing, and a willingness to consider diverse perspectives. This can be facilitated through cross-functional ideation sessions, open dialogue, and regular meetings to align on progress.  
 

Skill-sharing is another important approach. For example, both disciplines apply research techniques such as interviews, surveys and workshops to gather insights and requirements from users. UX teams may apply other methods such as diary studies, card sorting, top task research and ethnographic research. Most BAs would welcome learning these new skills, and in return can share core beneficial BA methods to the UX team.   
       
Integrating UX activities into the Agile process can also bridge the gap. This can be achieved by:   

• involving UX designers early to understand business goals and constraints; 
• jointly conducting user research and usability testing, with developers and stakeholders observing and participating;  
• BA and UX teams co-creating personas, user journeys, and prototypes to communicate user needs and align efforts;  
• enabling closer collaboration through co-location or pairing UX Designers with BAs and Developers. 

The Benefits of Collaboration  

When UX and BA teams work together effectively, there are many benefits:  

1. Improved User Satisfaction: By considering both user needs and business requirements, digital solutions are more likely to meet end-user expectations, leading to increased satisfaction and adoption.   
2. Enhanced Business Value: Aligning user experiences with business objectives ensures that digital products drive tangible value for the organisation, such as increased efficiency, revenue, or customer loyalty.   
3. Reduced Rework and Costs: Collaboration helps identify and address issues early in the development process, minimising costly rework and project delays.   
4. Fostering Innovation: By combining user insights and business knowledge, teams can identify opportunities for innovation, enabling organisations to meet evolving market demands.  

In conclusion, collaboration between User Experience (UX) and Business Analysis (BA) professionals is crucial for creating digital products and services that delight users and drive business success. By working together, these disciplines bridge the gap between user needs and business requirements, ensuring user-friendly solutions aligned with organisational objectives.    

Chris Rourke is the Founder and CEO of User Vision, a leading UX and service design consultancy which helps clients provide better experiences to their customers through our range of UX strategy, experience design, service design and accessibility solutions.  He also shares his experience through in-house and public training and regularly speaks at conferences. Chris has a particular interest in experience design, ethnographic research methods, web accessibility, remote usability testing, and persuasion.